“People who said the Big East was down have never had to compete in the Big East.”JIM CALHOUN

PHOENIX – The proud old giant needed this one, because it’s been a tough year. It’s funny the way people around the country sometimes talk about the Big East, like it’s some kind of relic from the mid 1980s, placed on a dusty shelf alongside Rambo, Alf and a vinyl Dire Straits album.

Folks in the ACC believe they invented basketball, of course, having assembled some of the best teams of all time. Folks in the SEC believe they elevated the game, having purchased some of the best players of all time. And don’t even try to strike up a conversation with folks from the Big 12. They believe they play basketball, and everyone else dabbles in some kind of lawn darts.

The Big East?

Go around the country, people act like it disbanded in 1985, when it became the only league ever to have three teams qualify for the Final Four. That’s kind of funny, actually, given that since 1999, the Big East has two national champions, Connecticut and Syracuse, which happens to be just as many as the fabled ACC.

And this year, they have the smart basketball fan’s choice to win another one.

“People don’t understand, when you play in a league like the Big East, it conditions you to play the kind of games you have to win to make a big run in the tournament,” Connecticut’s Emeka Okafor said early Saturday evening, after his Huskies had wrapped up the school’s second Final Four berth in six years. “If you survive those wars night after night, there’s nothing you’re going to see that’ll bother you too much.”

Yet the Big East has become one of the most maligned leagues in recent years. The style of play was criticized. The talent level was questioned. There were too many mediocre teams strangling the middle. Seven years passed between Seton Hall’s appearance in the 1989 Championship Game and Syracuse playing in the ’96 finale. Fourteen years passed between Georgetown’s title and UConn’s. St. John’s and Villanova, once reliable members of the league’s core, fell on difficult times. So did Georgetown.

Then, of course, there were the defections. Boston College, a league original, chased the ACC’s big money, and so the Eagles deserve every beating they’re going to absorb for the rest of time. Miami and Virginia Tech? Big East purists said: “Good riddance. Never wanted them and their football-loving souls anyway.” But the rest of the country said: “Whatever happened to the Big East?” It was in trouble, they predicted. Big trouble. And in football, yes, the league is a lot weaker today than it was a year ago at this time.

But, then, the Big East has always been a basketball league. It’s always been about familiar rivals and loud gymnasiums, its energy derived from the five basketball months on the calendar. As it ever was, be it ever so: since the league was raided, it upgraded significantly with Cincinnati, Louisville and DePaul, basketball-first schools all. It saw Syracuse defend its national championship honorably.

And on Saturday, it will have Connecticut, one of the Original Seven, on hand in San Antonio, which only happens to be playing the best basketball of anyone in America right now.

“People who said the Big East Conference was down,” UConn coach Jim Calhoun said, “have never had to compete in the Big East Conference. I can tell you, it isn’t a fun challenge.”

No longer a memory, no longer a fun piece of nostalgia, the Big East is a big beast again. And only bound to get bigger, stronger. And beastier.